Meet the team: Office Administrator Claire O’Brien

Alison: What is it that you do at Annertech? 

Claire: I look after the finances – all the invoicing, in and out. I invoice all the clients for work done, I keep an eye on people’s timesheets, all the contract staff send me their invoices and I check those, and I pay everyone at the end of the month. 

I reconcile all the bank accounts and do monthly cash flows. I deal with a lot of queries too. I also keep track of our hosting and cookies contracts. 

My job is basically all about the money. Anything that relates to money will all come back to me and Kerri, our Financial Controller. 

Alison: Where do you call home? 

Claire: I grew up on a dairy farm in Wexford but then I moved to Dublin to study. I met my husband – Managed Services Director Anthony Lindsay – at University College Dublin when I was 19, and stayed. We had two sons, who are teenagers (17 and 15) now, and our life is here in Dublin.

Anthony Lindsay and Claire O'Brien visit Monet's garden in Giverny, France.

Alison: What are your interests outside of work? 

Claire: Teenagers take over your life! But I believe it’s important to keep time for yourself too. I read a lot – usually about 100 books a year, but I don’t think I’m going to hit 80 this year. I mostly read literary fiction but I also enjoy thrillers and fantasy. 

Alison: Paper books or digital ones? 

Claire: Actual books! I do listen to audio books but I don’t do digital books. I read an awful lot of library books but I buy books too, and I buy them faster than I can read them. My fantasy is to have a library at home. Being surrounded by books is important, I think. I grew up like that. My mum was a big reader too. 

Alison: You’ve been involved with a couple of charity organisations. Can you tell us a bit about that? 

Claire: I do a lot of volunteering. My parents did a lot when I was growing up and we were brought up to think it’s just what you do. I’m lucky; I have a blessed life and feel you should give back. I do it because I love it - it’s incredibly rewarding and I get a lot out of it. 

I don’t have a note in my head, and I don’t play any instruments, but my family are all keen musicians. Both boys played in the Dublin Youth Orchestra, and until recently I was the volunteer manager of the Junior Strings Orchestra, which was a huge amount of work but great fun. I made great friends there. 

I used to volunteer at Barretstown every summer for over 10 years. I stopped when Covid hit, but I plan to go back again. It’s a residential camp for children with serious illnesses, like cancer. They have sibling and family camps too. That was incredibly rewarding and so much fun as the entire idea is to give them back the childhood and fun they missed out on.

Claire was given a hoodie on her 10th anniversary of volunteering at Barretstown.

I love gardening, and have been involved with various organisations. I ran a school garden for seven years. And I was involved with the GIY - Grow It Yourself - organisation. I set one up in Crumlin, where I used to live, and ran that for about 10 years. 

I had an allotment for about 12 years but gave it up when we moved house - it was too far away. Now I’m part of a community garden in Fernhill - an old estate that the government bought and turned into a park. It had a big kitchen garden attached to the house, and we are slowly reclaiming that and that's where I grow my food now. 

A community garden is a different experience to the allotment. In the community garden we all work together, and it’s a wonderful atmosphere, so tranquil. The crops are harvested when they’re ready and people help themselves to the produce. 

The allotment was much more about self-sustaining. One summer we did an experiment – the whole family went vegetarian and we lived off the allotment for the summer. We never really went back, and we don’t really eat much meat at all. I grew up on a dairy farm so I think my family didn’t really get it when we turned vegetarian. But we’re not strict – it’s more of a health/environment thing.

Alison: How did you get into this line of work? 

Claire: Into accounting? By pure chance! I have a degree in English and Classics – actually a master’s degree in Classics from University College Dublin. I was doing some temp work when I finished college, and I got a job with Ford Credit. I’ve always been good at maths and numbers. So I was working in their wholesale department, and I actually really enjoyed it. 

Claire during a trip to Lyon, France.

Studies have shown that accountancy has a really high rate of job satisfaction. It’s relatively well-paid and not too stressful, and there is great satisfaction when you solve a problem or everything adds up or the books balance. I realised I liked it. I didn’t like private finance though, so I moved to a community centre in Drimnagh. 

After a few years I did an accounting technician qualification. I’m a book keeper rather than an accountant. I’ve been working at The Bosco community centre for 22 years now. 

A few years ago, the government cut the funding for my position, so I reduced my hours there. At the time Annertech was looking for someone to do their books. So I have two part-time jobs now – Annertech and The Bosco. 

Alison: How long have you been with Annertech? 

Claire: I’ve been with Annertech for five years now. When I first started here we were a lot smaller - less than 25. Now we’re nearly 40 people, and we offer more services. And of course we have a few overseas clients and two companies – one in the UK and one in Ireland. That means working with different currencies and VAT/Revenue systems. 

Alison: Have you met everyone on the Annertech team? 

Claire: Not in real life. But I interact with everyone, and I feel like I know the team relatively well. I love that I now know who Anthony’s talking about when he talks about work, as I have the pleasure of interacting with the Annertech team too. It’s a lovely group of people, and I look forward to meeting more of them in future.